Juliet's Soliloquy

William Shakespeare 1564 (Stratford-upon-Avon) – 1616 (Stratford-upon-Avon)



Farewell!--God knows when we shall meet again.
I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins
That almost freezes up the heat of life:
I'll call them back again to comfort me;--
Nurse!--What should she do here?
My dismal scene I needs must act alone.--
Come, vial.--
What if this mixture do not work at all?
Shall I be married, then, to-morrow morning?--
No, No!--this shall forbid it:--lie thou there.--
What if it be a poison, which the friar
Subtly hath minister'd to have me dead,
Lest in this marriage he should be dishonour'd,
Because he married me before to Romeo?
I fear it is: and yet methinks it should not,
For he hath still been tried a holy man:--
I will not entertain so bad a thought.--
How if, when I am laid into the tomb,
I wake before the time that Romeo
Come to redeem me? there's a fearful point!
Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,
To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,
And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes?
Or, if I live, is it not very like
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place,--
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for this many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are pack'd;
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort;--
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking,--what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth,
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad;--
O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,
Environed with all these hideous fears?
And madly play with my forefathers' joints?
And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?
And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,
As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?--
O, look! methinks I see my cousin's ghost
Seeking out Romeo, that did spit his body
Upon a rapier's point:--stay, Tybalt, stay!--
Romeo, I come! this do I drink to thee.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

1:55 min read
231

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLLMNOPQMRSTUVWXGYZ1 2 3 4 5 1 6 P7 8 9 FB0 D2 D
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,919
Words 378
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 46

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's greatest dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". more…

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